head (and body) in the clouds

one of the problems with only having one earth year in a country full of cool places to see is that often, second tier attractions get put off in favor of more pressing matters. by the time you get to them, sometimes it's a suboptimal time to visit. case in point: my hike with alista fow up mount karioi.

when i first went surfing in raglan many moons ago, i got to take a drive along the coast with one of the other denizens of the raglan backpackers. on one side of the mountain road was the ocean and beautiful stretches of beach and on the other was mount karioi, an old volcanic cone with AMAZING views of the coastline. as i tried to picture just how it good it would be to see everything from the top, i promised myself that i'd get back up there to see for myself before i left the country.

well, june rolled around and my time left in the country was growing pretty short. most of the weekends had filled up so it was now or never for hiking up karioi. i made plans for that weekend to go with alista fow and when i went to go pick him up the morning of, it was.....pissing down rain. but that's okay, right? i mean, perhaps it would let up by the time we got out to raglan (those few of you familiar with the west coast of new zealand realize that my previous statement was fraught with (in the immortal words of ashley leeds) 'unbridled optimism'). but hey, we'd made the plans, so we may as well try. sure enough, we got out to where we would park (calling it a parking lot is a stretch. it was basically at a fence outside someone's farm) and it was still raining and the entire top of the mountain was covered in clouds. no matter. hiking in the rain still beats sitting around at home, so up we went.

the hike up was largely uneventful, save our being passed by a large number of off road motorcyclists out for a good time in the mud. you know your knobby tires are finding no purchase when the two hikers are consistently passing you, but hey, they seemed like they were having a good time. the rain and wind also meant that it wasn't hot as balls like it had been when alista and i went up to the pinnacles, so i wasn't hearing nearly as many muttered "bugger"'s as i had before.

it took us about two hours of slipping and sliding to get to the top where, sure enough, we couldn't see much more than about 50 yards in any direction (i'm writing this from back in the US now, so it's yards, dammit). the wind drowned out any sound of the ocean. but we had our lunch and explored the broadcast tower and the world's smallest (and therefore kinda most impressive) helicopter landing pad until it got to be too cold and windy (and if i got cold, you know it's really cold). we made it back down without a) breaking anything or b) re-creating that scene from 'romancing the stone' where they slide all the way down the mountain into the pool.

the view from the top really is supposed to be impressive, but i have a feeling that i'd need to be spending a good long time in the country again before i'd devote a day to that hike, since there are just so many other places to see.